


Tribunus Plebis

by r4g6



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Ancient History, Ancient Rome, Drusus, Gen, Gracchus, Italy, Mentioned Ancient Roman Religion & Lore, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Roman Senate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r4g6/pseuds/r4g6
Summary: Marcus Livius Drusus has just been elected by the Roman people to serve as the Tribune of the Plebs for the year 91 BC. Can he withstand the volatile state of Roman politics? Will he sink or swim in the quagmire? With a range of allies by his side and enemies in the Senate, he may have no choice but to act. Whatever happens, he will go down in history.





	Tribunus Plebis

**Prologue**

**Rome, 133 BC**

The crowd drew away still clutching their clubs. The deed was done. The act finished. A distressing evil punished; pummelled by an angry mob. Before them, the heap had finished twitching. The final vestiges of life escaped from the motionless body as its chest collapsed under the weight of a severe beating. No one dared step forward to cover the corpse, so it lay there. Blood oozed underneath, flowing outwards through the cobblestones like capillaries of some political organ. It soaked the ripped white toga of the fellow, staining it a grand red. It was as though Jupiter, the god of the sky, had manifested himself among them. An omen, indeed, though its meaning did not matter to the crowd.

Yes, a tyrant had surely been slain this day in the forum. Only minutes before, it was clear the man in question had requested a crown be brought before him. Death was an obvious sentence to pass. It did not matter to the crowd that the man in question was a Tribune. That he was elected to his position by the assemblies. By the _populus romanus_. That he had gathered supporters by his side. That he had a family. That he had children. No, politics is a deadly game and one who chooses the path of tyranny must be slain. This was the Roman way.

It was for these reasons that a crowd gathered in the forum earlier that day intent on bringing justice to one of Rome’s most well-known politicians. Some armed themselves with clubs, others instead chose to tear up the wooden benches. Fashioning themselves with weapons in this way, they approached the man in question. He was not alone. Indeed, officials after the fact estimated that there were some 300 people in his service. All of them were set upon by the crowd. Some escaped, slipping through the cloud of death into the back alleys and side-streets which neighboured the forum, they could only run. The rest could not. They were killed where they stood, hammered by the clubs and stabbed by the wooden stakes. The crowd pressed forward unrelenting, chasing the magisterial figure at the back. Clad in the ceremonial toga of a Tribune, this man was easy to discern. His perfection in state prompting the crowd onwards, desperate to be the first to defile this being… To break his bones… To crush his skull… To empty his lungs…

Indeed, that is what happened when they reached him. He suffered blows all over his body. He crumpled over, folded, and fell to the cold cobblestones beneath his mangled feet. Following his demise, the crowd parted. Though triumphant they did not cheer, the hatred of this man was too great for his death to offer the crowd any relief. Among them were senators and other public officials, their ceremonial togas were reddened at the bottom by the pools of blood, but their hands were clean. The lictors stood around them had committed violence on their behalf. They spat on the corpse, cursing its name, and damning its family.

Then the crowd devised one final dishonour to afflict upon this tyrant and his supporters. Together, they collected the bodies and carried them by hand and cart to the riverbank. They paraded the corpses through the streets, calling at all the major temples to give offerings and pray that their violent act be pardoned and vindicated by the gods. Local residents, not part of the mob, were aghast. Some recognised the corpse paraded at the head of the group, his toga was still visible, and it could be guessed whom it belonged. As such, onlookers wept at the state laid before them. This unspeakable violence within the _pomerium_ could only shock, but a parade of death through the city would prompt a century of civil strife.

As the crowd drew near the riverside, they unloaded the corpses and dragged them by their feet to the banks. The tribunes body laid prostrate before the figure of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, the newly elected Pontifex Maximus, who had been at the forefront of organising this whirlwind of violence. Scipio knelt down and placed his hands around the neck of the dead Tribune. He clenched his fingers around the cold windpipe and squeezed with all his might, imitating the traditional means of executing a foreign King in a Roman triumph. Satisfied with his strangulation, Scipio instructed his lictors to commit the body to the Tiber. They duly obliged, throwing the corpse headfirst into the meandering river below. The splash rippled across its entire width but quickly the river returned to its original flow.

Thus, the life of Tiberius Gracchus was brought to a bloody conclusion. His body’s committal to the Tiber denied his family possession of the body, denied the construction of _imagines_ in his likeness, and most of all denied the internment of his corpse at his ancestral burial ground. Following him into the Tiber were some 300 of his supporters, their corpses treated in a similar fashion. They were barbarians on show, killed for entertainment and done away with. Committing their bodies to the Tiber, one after the other, prevented any hope of the river returning to its meandering path. The waters were disrupted, choppy and contaminated.

A new era of Roman history was set in motion.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a quick prologue to whet the appetite before it gets into the swing of things. Tiberius Gracchus is an important fellow. As Tribune of the Plebs, he sought a radical land redistribution policy to fix a widely held view that there was a "manpower shortage". His reforms proved too radical for the ruling elite and, following multiple breaches of political convention, they feared he wished power for himself. As such, he was butchered in the forum. This is probably the first ever instance of a killing inside of Rome motivated purely by politics. 
> 
> Word guide:  
> Populus Romanus = people of Rome.  
> Pomerium = the boundary around the city of Rome within which no weapons were permitted.  
> Imagines = waxworks of the face of the likeness of one who has died. Usually kept in the houses of close relatives.


End file.
